SANITARY IMPROVEMENT IN NEW YORK. 



319 



the mountain in 1870. At the same meeting of the Geological So- 

 ciety Mr. Becker presented a pestle with a communication from 

 Mr. Clarence King, stating that he found, it, about twenty years 

 ago, and took it with his own hands from undisturbed gravel 

 under Table Mountain in the vicinity of Tuttletown, not far from 

 Rawhide Gulch, and still nearer to the Empire mine. 



Thus the evidence establishing the occurrence of human relics 

 under Table Mountain would seem to be sufficient, and I should 

 not now repeat the doubts expressed at former times concerning 

 their genuineness. What the final conclusions will be as to the 

 date of this lava-flow, it is now too early to surmise. 



SANITARY IMPROVEMENT IN NEW YORK DURING 

 THE LAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY. 



By General EMMONS CLARK. 



DURING the quarter of a century (1836-1SG0) preceding the 

 war for the Union, a great change occurred in the character 

 and social condition of the population of the large cities upon the 

 Atlantic seaboard, and especially in the city of New York. The 

 famine in Ireland, and the extreme poverty of the people of that 

 unfortunate country ; the unsuccessful revolutions in various parts 

 of the Continent ; and the popular belief that Fortune beckoned 

 the poor and oppressed of foreign lands to comfortable homes 

 and to personal, political, and religious freedom beyond the At- 

 lantic, were chief among the causes of the immense emigration at 

 that period to the United States. Immigrants of some pecuniary 

 means and from agricultural districts generally located upon the 

 fertile plains of the Western States, and contributed by their in- 

 dustry and frugality to the rapid growth of new commonwealths. 

 But a very large number, from choice or necessity, and especially 

 the indigent, found homes in the large cities on the sea-coast, and 

 New York received and retained more than its share of the immi- 

 grants who were least desirable as a permanent addition to its 

 population. Previous to this tidal wave of immigration, the city 

 was peopled mainly by the descendants of its staid Dutch founders, 

 their thrifty English successors, and the active and enterprising 

 sons of New England. Their dwellings were generally small and 

 inexpensive, and were owned or occupied by single families of 

 moderate income, and the habitations of the more wealthy were 

 quite unpretentious. With the advent of Irish and German im- 

 migrants, houses constructed for the comfortable accommodation 

 of single families were transformed to shelter many ; their clean- 

 liness and heal thf ulness disappeared with the numerical increase 



